American Village

Lively story: Teach the value of freedom in the American Village

Pupils take part in an American Village Civic Trust educational programme. The American Village was founded in 1999 by its creator and CEO Tom Walker. It was in the latter eighties that he came up with the notion of a place where young citizens, but also the general population, could develop a feeling of personal responsibility for their governments by acquiring nationality and being patriot.

Walker, a self-described "history and bourgeois politician ", says: "We have a great boon of freedom in our land, but it is hard to keep up a feeling of self-responsibility for the bourgeois system. "He thought that it was necessary to remind us who we are and what we believe in, our common beliefs and experience.

Young Americans don't need the story to be arid and dirty. "He says young folks react to real life stories." American Village is situated on 183 hectares in the gentle sweeping verdant hilly countryside of the centre of Alabama, just outside Montevallo. Reconstructed from the Philadelphia home used by Presidents Washington and Adams before the German Empire relocated to Washington, D.C. The Lucille Ryals Thompson Chapel, where a yearly Thanksgiving worship celebration takes place, was inspire by the Bruton Parish Church of Williamsburg, a charismatic charity in which Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Patrick Henry participated.

So what does it mean to be an American national? At the Village we answer this by offering a dozen different programmes to suit pupils of all age. "The" "Presidents' Days" is for nursery school to third graders. The children are playing "Choose Your George", a show by Martha Washington and Queen Charlotte of England in which the contestants decide who would rather govern them:

Georgeth-Washington or King George III. Fortunately for the Republic, Washington usually win. Massasoit or Yellow Feather, the head of Wampanoag, who made friends with the pilgrims in Massachusetts, is part of the much-loved Thanksgiving-programme. During the colonial period, the kids find out how former White House governors used to celebrate Christmas. At the heart of the American Village's education programmes is Liberty, which recounts the history of how the Americans got their liberty from Britain.

American Village is open for guided visits from Monday to Friday from 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. Hikers can walk through the college and look at the toll stickers throughout the whole workday. You can hear Ben Franklin reading the Declaration of Independence, Patrick Henry giving his infamous "Give me Liberty or give me death" address, or Abigail Adams talking about being the woman of one of the company's founder.

Attendees can watch eighteenth-century matches, find out about the right colorful label, or watch dressed dance at an Independence Ball in Liberty Hall. The National Veterans Shrine and Registry of Honor was opened on the American Village site in February this year. Poole says it is "dedicated to those of every single generations who have ministered and offered sacrifices to the American population.

It is the task of the American Village to make sure that we do.